Postal Letter

Why are 11,000+ post office employees paid to do nothing?

http://www.federaltimes.com/index.php?S=4265826 Does a Union have something to do with this? The U.S. Postal Service, struggling with a massive deficit caused by plummeting mail volume, spends more than a million dollars each week to pay thousands of employees to sit in empty rooms and do nothing. It’s a practice called “standby time,” and it has existed for years — but postal employees say it was rarely used until this year. Now, postal officials say, the agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of standby time every week — the equivalent of having 1,125 full-time employees sitting idle, at a cost of more than $50 million per year. Mail volume is down 12.6 percent compared with last year, and many postal supervisors simply don’t have enough work to keep all employees busy. But a thicket of union rules prevents managers from laying off excess employees; a recent agreement with the unions, in fact, temporarily prevents the Postal Service from even reassigning them to other facilities that could use them.

Public Comments

1. They have one of the strongest unions around and are exercising their muscle at 0bama's direction
2. because they have too many chiefs and not enough indians, plus they are backed by the federal government not to fail so they don't have to worry about bad performances
3. It was part of the federal governments job creation program each administration get to add some people to the union so they can say they are creating jobs.
4. none of you people would last an hour working in a post office. the us post office set the stage for our countries growth. it may someday not be needed with technology, but to do what you are doing is a mockery of our countries hardest workers. your a joke of an American at best.
5. These are some of the "jobs" Obama "saved" It's remarkable how private enterprises see jobs as a cost, and demand value for their money, but government enterprises see the jobs themselves as the purpose of the enterprise sometimes. This part of the article is particularly insane: Nor can supervisors require employees to brush up on their training. One mail handler in Pennsylvania said a supervisor used to force employees on standby time to read postal manuals. “The local union shop filed a grievance against the Postal Service,” said the employee, who asked to remain anonymous because of concerns about retaliation. “We’re on standby time, not training time. Standby time is different. ... You can’t make people read training materials on standby time.”